eCommerce Payment Professionals Come Together at MRC

May 27, 2014 10:00:00 AM

26 May, 2014 - Earlier this month, I was in Disneyland Paris. But the topic of interest was Risk, not Rides.

Disneyland was the venue for the Merchant Risk Council’s European Congress. MRC is the largest non-profit educational event for eCommerce payment experts and fraud professionals in Europe. The congress is a dedicated place where many of our existing merchants and prospects from the eCommerce world come to gain insight from each other and from industry experts.

For more than a decade, GlobalCollect has been fully committed to supporting the Merchant Risk Council and has been involved in the organization’s leadership while supplying valuable content, speakers and unbiased professional input.

At GlobalCollect we truly believe in the power of customer knowledge as the ultimate way to growth and prosperity. Merchant Risk Council provides a great value within the Payment Risk and Fraud space. It aims to maximize merchant networking, to cultivate knowledge exchange among peers in the same industry – a proven and familiar event concept for GlobalCollect. From our own events and customer advocacy work at GlobalCollect, we see that merchants benefit tremendously from speaking to other merchants, and they appreciate meeting in a neutral space where they are able to openly discuss issues that they are faced with in eCommerce.

At MRC, merchants are able to join various tracks and sessions alongside their competitors, industry colleagues and suppliers. Presenters, speakers and moderators are both peers and competitors. While it may seem unconventional and unwise to share knowledge with your competitors it is the best thing you can do in this young industry. The participants know that no one can better understand their challenges than their industry peers; they are each other’s best conversation partner. MRC recognizes very well this need to understand and be understood, and has positioned itself as a meeting place for these minds to inspire merchants and uncover their lessons learned and best practices for the benefit of those who participate. There is always something for every appetite in the 2 day conference agenda: be it the elementary “how to basics of eCommerce and payments”, or the details of the complex “Fraud and Data” topics. The event agenda is always filled with big name merchants and major players of the industry.

This year’s MRC Europe 2014 conference was no different to the previous ones (the MRC usually has 2 major events: MRC USA and MRC Europe supported by smaller “platinum” events in the two regions) welcoming over 400 guests to their event. GlobalCollect was involved with the event as a board member, speaker and also as an exhibitor. The booth gives us a great opportunity to meet our merchants and this year we were able to demo our new award winning Business Intelligence Tool – Elevate. The tool received excellent reviews from our clients, who were excited to see how it can help them gain more knowledge and intelligence from their payments data.

GlobalCollect’s Account Director Andrew Monroe took the stage to educate merchants in the Payments Showcase, providing clear and concise insight in what the Payment Service Provider’s role is in the payment value chain. Andrew also successfully led the round table discussions on Russia.

All in all, I was impressed with how MRC sets the right tone and stage for merchants to address industry questions and it is the place for many to ignite hot topics in the realm of eCommerce.

Whether you are a friend or foe; big or small, at MRC you have a place to meet and learn. The big takeaways from MRC events is the actual realization that many face very similar challenges and some who have overcome those challenges are not shy to share them with their peers.